Not every entrepreneur sets out to start a business. For Markus Frind, his business came out of simply trying to make his mark on the world of online dating. “I saw the other dating sites that were out there at the time, and I knew I could do better,“ said Frind in interview. He began work on Plenty of Fish, and has watched the free online dating site grow to millions of users in less than a decade. “I didn’t set out with the idea of starting my own company – but Plenty of Fish evolved very quickly.”

Dating site Plenty of Fish, abbreviated as POF, was started by Frind at his home in Vancouver in 2003. “A dating site seemed interesting and challenging to build. I wanted to learn more about building web applications with ASP.NET and improve my resume.” Though there are now countless online dating sites, the site was unique at the time, as it provided high-quality dating matches with no cost to users. Frind was the sole employee until the customer service requirements finally became too much, and he brought on some staff. “When I reached 15 million users and peaked at two billion page views, I knew I needed customer service to effectively support POF’s exploding user base. In 2008 we moved into our first office, and we recently added a third to support our growth.”

The online dating space isn’t without competition. Popular site Match.com was founded in 1995, and eHarmony opened in 2000. Frind believes the biggest challenges building POF were “constantly predicting how users would react and interact with the site. Also keeping the focus on growth hacking, and expanding the POF team most effectively.” The focus on growing consistently has paid off for the POF team, as they announced in April that the company was seeing over two billion pageviews per week, and 100 million messages were being shared between potential couples.

For Frind, the biggest milestone for POF has been watching user numbers grow, and seeing the events his customers host. “The site recently reached over three million active daily users, and POF members have now hosted over 20,000 singles events – but we’re constantly reaching new milestones.”

POF has been bootstrapped since day one, and Frind believes they key to success is simple. “Keep costs as low as possible, and follow a lean startup [model].” Not raising outside funding hasn’t hampered POF’s success, as the company was featured on BusinessInsider’s Digital 100, which lists the world’s most valuable technology companies. POF is listed as number 97, above Vox Media and Gawker. POF offers free online dating options, but also has a paid plan allowing users to get more visibility in exchange for a monthly fee. The site also features targeted advertising, allowing businesses to advertise to its user base and focus the ads by zip code, age, gender, education, profession, and a variety of other targeting metrics.

Frind and POF recently made their first investment, contributing funds to a seed round for theComplete.me. TechCrunch describes the Facebook app as a “pseudo-rival dating site” to POF, but Frind stands by their investment, saying “we are drawn to different ideas that have the potential to disrupt the current state of online dating.” POF’s investment in the company was alongside funds raised from CrunchFund and Intel Capital, bringing the investment to an impressive $1.22 million.

For aspiring entrepreneurs, Frind believes you should always “focus on something that plays to your strengths, and understand growth – growth drives everything in this world.“

When asked what was next for POF, Frind kept it simple, saying “we are going to rule the world.” While this may seem like an ambitious goal for an online dating site, their quest for global expansion seems to be going as planned so far. The company offers their site with localized language in Germany, France and Spain, and the Brazilian POF was featured in February as the number one dating site in Brazil, surpassing even local dating sites for the top spot.

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